Frankly, I could fill this list with at least two more McCarthy novels: No Country for Old Men and The Road. But Blood Meridian is the most interesting of the three to me. The threadbare plot follows fourteen-year-old ‘The Kid’ as he travels through the wilds of Mexico with the scalp hunters John Joel Glanton and the monstrous Judge Holden.

The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed.

Some critics cite Blood Meridian as the pinnacle of contemporary fiction. Naturally, that is a debatable stance. But McCarthy’s novel stands as an incredible indictment of senseless violence, in particular, those acts of evil committed in the name of America and Christianity. The Judge will haunt your dreams for weeks after you finish the last page.